Born to Command

August 16, 2011Posted inDanville Green, Historical people, Historical sites, NSM articles

Addison W. Preston’s Call to Arms

By Mark R. Moore

Ver­mont Asso­ciate and archivist at the Danville VT His­tor­i­cal Society
Pre­ston in full dress uniform

How many times do we wish his­to­ry would come alive for us? The sweat of bod­ies and hors­es, the ting, clink and clang of accou­ter­ments , the deep glow and scent of bur­nished leather, shin­ing brass but­tons, the glint of bul­lion gold braid on sleeves and shoul­ders in the bright sun­light, pass­ing through a nat­ur­al arch­way of fra­grant lilac. Walt Whit­man put obser­va­tions like this into verse:

…the head of my cav­al­ry parad­ing on spir­it­ed horses,
With sabres drawn and glis­ten­ing, and car­bines by their thighs, (ah, my brave horsemen!
My hand­some tan-faced horse­men! what life, what joy and pride,
With all the per­ils were yours.)

This was undoubt­ed­ly the spir­it that then Cap­tain Addi­son Web­ster Pre­ston of Danville con­veyed to star­ry-eyed new enlis­tees as he recruit­ed them into Com­pa­ny D of the 1st Ver­mont Cav­al­ry in 1862. Here at the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety we have Addi­son Preston’s blue wool dress uni­form, his dress pants, his boots, car­tridge box, horse’s hal­ter, flask and McClel­lan saddle.

More impor­tant­ly, I think, we have a pho­to­graph of him at around the age of 33 that con­veys his image—his thin­ning hair is swept back, his mus­tache is fierce, his eyes are fiery and he grasps his sabre’s hilt as if ready to draw it and smite the enemy.

He was pro­mot­ed to Lt. Colonel by 1863 and com­mand­ed the entire 1st Ver­mont Cav­al­ry. Quot­ing from Joseph D. Col­lea, Jr’s book The First Ver­mont Cav­al­ry in the Civ­il War, upon his death the Ver­mont Record wrote, “Colonel Pre­ston was char­ac­ter­ized by quick­ness of per­cep­tion, thought and action which made him what he was as a sol­dier and an offi­cer. He nev­er found exact­ly his right place til he went into the army…Col. Pre­ston might not have achieved so sig­nal a suc­cess as he did in war. He was a born sol­dier, and found that out when the coun­try sound­ed the call to arms.”

But this does not mean he failed to attend to the needs of his men or their fam­i­lies. The record is replete with let­ters writ­ten by him to wid­ows and the Gov­ern­ment Pen­sion Board detail­ing a trooper’s last ill­ness or his hero­ism in bat­tle. His after-bat­tle reports are suc­cinct in con­trast to the dra­mat­ic accounts he sent back to the papers in Vermont.

His per­son­al let­ters to his younger broth­er, William Hen­ry Pre­ston (future Prin­ci­pal- 1867–1870- of Danville Acad­e­my), shows he also con­tin­ued to be atten­tive to mat­ters at home. In let­ters housed at the Kitchel Cen­ter, Fair­banks Muse­um, and tran­scribed by Lynn Bon­field, the read­er wit­ness­es his direct and com­mand­ing style.

“Hen­ry

“I have writ­ten to B. N Davis to day and I wish you to keep your eye out for Col Sawyer and also one Sgt Mitchel of Co D when he took home with him. Say to Esq Davis to look sharp for the Col. I fear he will try to injure me in Vt if you hear of it let me know. Are you going to teach this win­ter or study a profession?

“How much did you make last fall…

“Remem­ber Ener­gy is what can grow. I will write you often on this subject…

Addi­son”

A Visit to Aspet

August 16, 2011Posted inHistorical people, Historical sites, NSM articles
One of the most famous of the Saint-Gau­dens’ sculp­tures is of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, a white com­man­der, lead­ing the all-black 54th Mass­a­chu­setts regiment.
By Paul Chouinard, Pres­i­dent of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society
 
On Sun­day, July 12th, Bernadette and I, along with friends, ven­tured south along the Con­necti­cut Riv­er to Wind­sor, VT where we crossed the Con­necti­cut over VT’s longest cov­ered bridge. Our des­ti­na­tion was the Saint-Gau­dens estate, Aspet. This Nation­al His­toric Site is locat­ed in Cor­nish, N.H. on Route 12A. Our plan was to enjoy a pic­nic on the lawn of the estate, locat­ed on a hill, high above the Con­necti­cut Riv­er, over­look­ing Mount Ascut­ney in the dis­tance. We enjoyed our pic­nic while lis­ten­ing to a cham­ber con­cert by Rogers & Mil­li­can per­form­ing the music of Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel. The mag­nif­i­cent peren­ni­al gar­dens and the sounds of nature pro­vid­ed a per­fect atmosphere.
 

Augus­tus Saint-Gau­dens, some­times known as the Amer­i­can Michelan­ge­lo, was among the fore­most sculp­tors of the late nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. He arrived in Cor­nish in 1885. He rent­ed an old inn for the sum­mer and over time he adapt­ed the house to his needs and con­vert­ed the barn into a stu­dio. He ulti­mate­ly pur­chased the prop­er­ty and con­tin­ued to sum­mer there until 1892, when it became his year-round home. Over the years he trans­formed the prop­er­ty into a cen­ter for artists and intel­lec­tu­als of the peri­od, who formed what has become known as the “Cor­nish Colony.” The Colony includ­ed: painters Max­field Par­rish, Thomas Dew­ing, George de For­est Bush, Lucia Fuller, and Keny­on Cox; drama­tist Per­cy Mac-Kaye; Amer­i­can nov­el­ist Win­ston Churchill; archi­tect Charles Platt; and sculp­tors Paul Man­ship, Her­bert Adams, and Louis Saint- Gau­dens, broth­er of Augus­tus. They cre­at­ed a dynam­ic social envi­ron­ment, cen­tered around Saint-Gaudens.

All Hell Breaks Loose: Vermonters Get Down to the Business

August 16, 2011Posted inHistorical events, NSM articles
Civil­ian observers at the Bat­tle of Bull Run

By Gary Far­row, Mem­ber of the Danville VT His­tor­i­cal Society

One hun­dred and fifty years ago this month saw the Union reel­ing from the first major bat­tle of the Civ­il War; riot­ing over seces­sion­ists in New Eng­land; and a spate of activ­i­ty in Ver­mont and the North­east King­dom devot­ed to mar­shal­ing the troops.

The out­come of Bull Run, fought Sun­day July 21, shook every­one from their naive slum­ber. Gen­er­al McDowell’s 30,000 Union troops marched the 30 miles west of Wash­ing­ton DC to attack an equal num­ber of Con­fed­er­ate troops. Some gov­ern­ment dig­ni­taries decid­ed to make a day of it and go and see the bat­tle for themselves.

Through A Glass Darkly

July 21, 2011Posted inDanville Green, From the archives, Historical people, Historical sites

How glass plate technology met high Tech

By Mark R. Moore
 
A fine lady in a hat out for a drive.

His­to­ry in Danville is more than smelly, mildewed books full of dates and records of live birth and dead molder­ing bones. Most peo­ple in the Unit­ed States live in sleek, shiny, mod­ern con­nect­ed metrop­o­lis­es where the pejo­ra­tive phrase “What have you done for me late­ly?” sym­bol­izes both the imme­di­ate lack of car­ing and super­fi­cial con­nec­tions as opposed to what we have here in Danville. It’s what I would call “wear­able his­to­ry” here. Your best friend might be relat­ed to the street you live on (was be a Brain­erd, it might be Green­bank Hol­low, the res­i­dence you live in might have been known for a hun­dred years as Dr. Smith’s House or, pos­si­bly, the Pet­tengill farm. The hill you can see might be Roy Moun­tain and you find there’s an eigh­teen year old Roy on Face­book. Strangest of all, that per­son, by and large, can, if asked, quick­ly trace their lin­eage direct­ly back to why that house, hill or road was named for a per­son in their fam­i­ly, not because the fact was drilled into them at school, but because they have a ret­i­cent North­east King­dom nob­less oblige (broad­ly defined-defer­ring to a per­son because of their family’s past his­to­ry past)and sim­ply grew up with a sto­ry in their past and is left for you, the present, to dis­cov­er how the past appel­la­tion became attached to the house or hol­low. Recent­ly, I was pre­sent­ed with a group of dif­fer­ent sized, dark, appar­ent­ly smoky glass pho­to­graph­ic neg­a­tives that had been in encased a shoe­box in a cel­lar for near­ly hun­dred years before they saw the light of day and asked to dis­cov­er what rela­tion, if any they have to Danville.

The box of glass neg­a­tives was brought to me by His­tor­i­cal Har­ri­et. Har­ri­et is always going through our store of arti­facts and likes to sur­prise me with her lat­est dis­cov­ery and see what I will do with it. Before want­i­ng to delve into the box and see how His­tor­i­cal Har­ri­et would adapt avail­able mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy to solve to solve the prob­lem of get­ting a pic­ture from an old, dark chem­i­cal­ly coat­ed neg­a­tive I did some research on the his­to­ry of glass plates. Short­ly after Louis Daguerre and William Hen­ry Fox Tal­bot pio­neered the daguerreo­type in 1839 which were print­ed on sil­ver-plat­ed cop­per or brass. Fred­er­ick Scott Archer, an Eng­lish sculp­tor, expand­ed their dis­cov­er­ies the dis­cov­er­ies of Daguerre and Tal­bot and came out with the wet glass plate know as the wet col­lo­di­on neg­a­tive. Because it was coat­ed glass and not paper the wet glass neg­a­tives cre­at­ed a sharp­er, more detailed neg­a­tive and could pro­duce more than one print from a neg­a­tive but this had to be done with­in five minutes.

In Search of House Roots–The Varney House

July 17, 2011Posted inHistorical sites, North Danville

 By Mary Barlow

In 2005 we decid­ed to move to Ver­mont. We start­ed look­ing in our price range in many towns from Ran­dolph to Bar­ton but final­ly set­tled on Danville as a friend­ly, beau­ti­ful place to con­cen­trate our efforts. After look­ing at 40 houses–some new, some old, some ren­o­vat­ed, some not so good–we rec­og­nized that we want­ed a house that was old, with good “bones,”and afford­able for us to renovate/restore and make our own. On Decem­ber 16, 2005, in one of the biggest snows of the win­ter, we bought our house in North Danville vil­lage and began the process of fix­ing it up.

Our first vis­i­tor was our neigh­bor from across the road, Ger­ard Lamothe, who wel­comed us and told us about the com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions: the Com­mu­ni­ty Club, the School Asso­ci­a­tion and the His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, all housed in the old North Danville School just up the road. We joined the Com­mu­ni­ty Club and soon heard about the Old House Com­mit­tee. Here we learned the basics of prop­er­ty research.

The approach nor­mal­ly used is to work back­wards from the cur­rent own­er to the one pri­or and so forth. The Danville Town Clerk’s office has a card file that cross ref­er­ences Grantor (sell­er) and Grantee (buy­er) with the book and page num­ber where the deed is filed. The books with all the deeds, quit claims, mort­gages and pro­bate court doc­u­ments from Danville going back to before the char­ter of Danville (which was signed in 1802) are there for your research.

As one fol­lows the own­er­ship back in time, prop­er­ties were divid­ed, joined, and descrip­tions are not eas­i­ly rec­og­nized (using stake and stone mark­ers, trees, and fences, etc ). If prop­er­ty was inher­it­ed and the pro­bate was not filed in Danville, fur­ther research may take you to St Johns­bury or to old Orange Coun­ty records. Fad­ed ink, cen­turies old writ­ing and no longer used words made for time-con­sum­ing read­ing and some­times required the use of a mag­ni­fy­ing glass.

War Becomes a Reality

July 16, 2011Posted inHistorical events

Going to See the Elephant, July 1861

By Paul Chouinard, Pres­i­dent of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

Editor’s Note: “Going to see the ele­phant” was an expres­sion used by enlis­tees to the Union Army describ­ing the expe­ri­ence of coun­try boys going off to war where they would expe­ri­ence life in ways they could not have imagined.
 
 
With the Capi­tol at Wash­ing­ton under threat of inva­sion by the Con­fed­er­ate Army, Union sol­diers trans­port the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­men­t’s stan­dard weights and mea­sures to St. Johns­bury for safe­keep­ing. Cap­tion and illus­tra­tion from the book Pio­neers In Indus­try Fair­banks, Morse & Co.
July of 1861 marked a turn­ing point. War became a grim real­i­ty with major bat­tles fought, result­ing in seri­ous injuries and loss of life. Men returned home bear­ing the phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal scars of war. Gen­er­al­ly, the real­i­ty of war did not hit home until news of local casu­al­ties arrived. The first Danville casu­al­ty was Charles D. Cook, who was just sev­en­teen years old when he died in the hos­pi­tal at Camp Grif­fin, Vir­ginia, of typhoid fever in Novem­ber of 1861. The opti­mism which had pre­vailed at the out­set of the war, regard­ing the fact that union forces would quick­ly tri­umph, began to fade.

Accord­ing to Susan­nah Clif­ford in Vil­lage In the Hills: “There was at least one fam­i­ly in Danville that had rel­a­tives fight­ing on both sides of the bat­tle lines, but in this par­tic­u­lar case kin­ship proved stronger than patri­o­tism. James Davis, son of Bliss Davis, was the only known Danville sol­dier to see the war from the Con­fed­er­ate side. James went west at age eigh­teen to live with his uncle in Ohio and then moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to study med­i­cine. When the war broke out in 1861, he joined the Con­fed­er­ate ser­vice as an assis­tant sur­geon of the Sev­enth Louisiana Reg­i­ment and lat­er became full sur­geon. He served through­out the war and was present at all the major bat­tles in north­ern Vir­ginia. James cousin, Alexan­der, who was with the Union army, was wound­ed at the bat­tle at Savage’s Sta­tion, cap­tured by the Con­fed­er­ate army and sent to Ander­son­ville Prison. While in prison, Alexan­der learned that his cousin was in Rich­mond, and he wrote to James to let him know of his sit­u­a­tion. James imme­di­ate­ly set to get­ting Alexan­der exchanged and even fur­nished him with trans­porta­tion back to his regiment.”

On the home front, local farm­ers and horse breed­ers in Danville helped fur­nish the cav­al­ry with fine hors­es. Danville’s Meri­no Sheep and Greenbank’s woolen mill con­tributed to the war effort, as did most oth­er tex­tile mills in New Eng­land, by pro­vid­ing woolen broad­cloth for the pro­duc­tion of blan­kets and uni­forms. In the autumn of 1861, Greenbank’s mill received fed­er­al con­tracts to man­u­fac­ture woolen broad­cloth for uniforms.

A pair of stir­rups made in Fair­banks fac­to­ry for use by Union cav­al­ry­men in the Civ­il War. Cap­tion and pho­to­graph from Pio­neers in Indus­try Fair­banks, Morse & Co.

Ear­ly in 1861, with the city of Wash­ing­ton in grave dan­ger, the offi­cial stan­dard weights of the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment were moved to St. Johns­bury for safe­keep­ing. E. and T. Fair­banks and Co. began the man­u­fac­ture of brass stir­rups and brass trim­mings for the North­ern cav­al­ry, as well as of artillery har­ness irons and curb bits. In addi­tion the offi­cials of the New York branch of E. and T. Fair­banks helped Gov­er­nor Eras­tus Fair­banks secure sup­plies for both infantry and cav­al­ry of the Ver­mont regiments.

THE NORTH STAR, July 13, 1861

THE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

It rec­om­mends that Con­gress pro­vide, by legal means, for “mak­ing this con­test a short and deci­sive one;” and the Pres­i­dent asks that body to pass an act to raise 400,000 men, and $400,000,000. to pros­e­cute the work. Should Con­gress grant it, we trust the great pow­er thus con­ferred, will be wise­ly used, in crush­ing rebel­lion, and giv­ing to this mighty con­flict a strict­ly nation­al and Union-restor­ing character.